


i'll watch the stars with you until it's your time

by orphan_account



Series: can i touch the stars before i die [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Cancer, M/M, Metaphors, Star Analogies, terminal illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-29
Updated: 2014-08-29
Packaged: 2018-02-15 07:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2220873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It just sucks to be an old soul trapped in a young body that is going to die in nine months.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll watch the stars with you until it's your time

Being told he had cancer was not a shocking revelation. It didn't evoke an ‘oh my god I hope you’re joking’ type of reaction. It was just a slight ‘oh’ uttered from Castiel’s lips while his parents looked on with tears in their eyes.

While they asked the doctor if there was anything they could do, Castiel sat down in the chair in the vacated doctor’s office. He folded his hands in his lap, his mother and father asked the doctor their questions, and ten minutes later he was in the car driving back home.

It all seemed so abnormally normal to Castiel. The diagnosis explained the symptoms, there was treatment they could do to fix it, and his parents would pray for him.

All normal.

Castiel considered that this was a delayed reaction that he was having to the realization that he was most likely to die rather than survive. He was fifteen, he was old enough to know the implications that death had. He knew far too well.

When he got home he went directly to his room. He had a feeling that his face was gray or somewhat pale from the shock. He expected to freak out, to punch something, or to scream, but he didn't scream. He just stared at himself in the mirror.

“Stage III cancer.” He whispered to himself. He stripped his clothes, wiry body reflected back at him. He didn't look like a cancer patient. He didn't feel like one.

There were splitting headaches and a lack of clarity that he knew now was a result of the tumor in his head. But he didn't look like he was sick. He just looked like he was a teenager.

A teenager who had been told he wouldn't live to see college. He stared at the books that he had dropped on his bed. They were textbooks for junior year that he had already started. It was the beginning of school, he had AP exams in May that he might not live to take, that didn’t matter because he wasn't getting into college.

Pointless.

He wanted to go over and rip out every single page. His hands twitched. He resisted. He had to do something else.

Cas put his shirt back on. He went off to his drawer and found the telescope that Luke had given him for his birthday before he had left. It had been years ago.

He hadn't done this before, but he had seen it done in those movies that Sam liked to show him about teenagers in the 90s climbing out of their windows to look up at the stars. He opened his window, putting one foot on the ledge. He got a good grip on the telescope with his left hand and used his right to push himself out of the window into the still-summer evening air. It was slightly humid out as he managed to get his full body outside of his room, pulling himself up to the ledge. There was a crevice that was a part of the house’s decorations that he could get his foot up on, if he could stretch. He hefted his leg up to reach it, almost pulling it. With a lot of strength he managed to gain a footing and hoisted himself up to the roof.

Panting, he lay on his back and stared up at the stars.

He was going to die. He was going to die at a young age. And he wasn't okay with that.

He decided to try and find the north star. He knew nothing about astronomy. Picking up the telescope with shaky hands, he brought it up to his eye and looked through it at the stars until he found one that was bright enough that he thought it was the North Star, but he wasn’t 100% sure.

Stars can die too, a voice in his mind whispered. Stars could go supernova and die also, leaving a weak shell behind (a dwarf star, is that what it was called?) and a black hole (at least that what’s he thought, he wasn’t certain.) Black holes could suck up everything in their path and leave no light behind, consuming everything that encountered it. They were a pit of nothingness.

They were death. And grief. And everything that happens after the death of a star.

“Souls are like stars, Castiel.” Michael had said to him with a sad smile. “They shine bright, and then they fade and leave a nothingness that can’t be filled.”

Castiel wondered when Michael had gotten so wise

_I’m another supernova waiting to happen. And there’s nothing I can do to fill the inevitable void._

He laid back and let the telescope rest on his chest.

Looking up at the stars in their beauty that he wished he had the time to appreciate more in his short life, he wept.

The stars continued on with their path in the heavens while the young boy with an old soul cried beneath their watch.

-

"People say that they want to travel the world before they die, but I want to see the universe before I die."

Castiel said this to Sam the day that he had decided to tell him.

"That seems like an impossible goal on the bucket list to have."

"Doesn't everyone have something on their bucket list that people call impossible? Like an old man who wants to skydive, or the sixty year old woman who wants to give birth to twins."

"That last one was oddly specific."

Castiel sighed and looked back at the stars above him. From next to him he could barely make out Sam’s triumphant smile.

Castiel just continued to stare at the stars.

There was a comfortable summer silence between the two of them.

Castiel knew it wouldn't last forever.

"I’m going to die. Sooner than expected."

Sam was silent. Castiel avoided his gaze and tried to pick out the Big Dipper.

"God Cas, I’m so sorry."

Cas chuckled weakly. “Yeah, I’m sorry too.” He put his arms above his head.

Sam was silent for a while longer, letting Cas take his time.

Castiel must’ve stared at the heavens for an hour with his naked eyes before he spoke again.

"It’s a tumor. Cancerous, in my brain. They said I have about three months to live. I’m trying to memorize all the stars until then, but it’s getting harder each day to remember all of their names and positions.

"It’s kinda funny, ’cause Luke did the exact same thing before he disappeared. He would constantly go out on the roof and stare at the stars, and sometimes Michael would join him. I find myself wondering if maybe he thought the same thing I did, that the world simply held no interest after you realize how insignificant we all are in the end. There’s no definite purpose for humanity to exist, and we’re just so small and insignificant in the universe. I want to see the large things, the things that are outside of this world that matter in the grand scheme of the universe. But I can’t leave. I’m so trapped.

"There’s this wide open beauty of the universe that encompasses us, but we can only see fragments of the whole picture. It’s so frustrating, like having only bits and pieces of a puzzle that might match up with one another, but you’re not sure. It’s being inside of the largest, most breathtaking picture in existence only to never be able to see all of it, but only to be a part of it.

"If I can’t be a part of that beauty, then I at least want to be able to see it."

They stayed the night in that summer silence for what seemed like an eternity.

-

"The ergosphere." Cas had whispered to Sam the day after they told him he was going to die in nine months.

"I’m guessing this has something to do with space." Sam said as he rolled over to see Castiel’s face in the bed they were sharing. Cas was looking at the constellations painted above his bed, eyes far off somewhere else. Sam liked to think that it was a place where the stars gathered Cas up in their arms and held him tight, protecting him. Cas had once said that Sam reminded him of the hunter and his bow. He wasn't sure which constellation that made Cas in their relationship, but he knew that Cas saw him as a protector. His protector.

But Sam couldn't protect Cas from the cancer inside him despite how much he tried to be his Orion.

"It’s the edge of black holes. It’s where things start to get sucked in. Then comes the event horizon, and then the singularity that is the center of it all. The singularity has zero mass and zero density. Zero volume, nothing. It’s just an emptiness." His eyes were wide, blue, and unblinking. "The singularity is like what happens after death. You don’t go anywhere, you’re just gone. And a void happens that sucks everyone into a whirling depression once you’re gone." He turned to Sam. "I could care less about what happens to me after death, heaven or hell or nothing." He curled closer to Sam. "I just care about the ergosphere and don’t want anyone to reach the singularity."

Sam couldn't think of what to say. So he kissed Cas’s forehead and held his star close to him as he fell asleep, dreaming of stars and angels.

-

One of the most heartbreaking things about it all was how Castiel grew up in such a short amount of time.

Within the first few weeks he had stopped wearing that black leather jacket that was barely within the dress code. He cut his hair within the first month so that it was no longer a mohawk. Within three months he had gone from a full fledged punk teenager whose first reaction was to throw up the finger to a quiet man who wore sweaters and talked softly but with firm words.

He had started to become more reclusive after the announcement. Within a month Sam was the only one he talked to outside of school. His group of friends worried about him.

“Is he doing okay?” Meg had asked Sam after school one day.

They never really talked much, but lately he had been the only way to know what was going on with Cas, so a lot of people ended up talking with him.

Sam could only give a weak smile in return.

After those three months Sam decided that it was enough.

He was with Cas in his room at the Novak house. Sitting across from him was Castiel in a baggy blue sweater and tan pants.

He still smiled, for what it was worth. He hadn't given up ever, really.

“Yesterday it even got to be large enough that I-”

“Cas we need to talk about this.”

Castiel stopped mid-sentence to stare at Sam. He tilted his head to one side. “What do we need to talk about?”

“You. And this being distant thing you got going on.” Sam sat closer to Cas on his bed. “Meg asked about you today.”

Castiel grimaced.

Sam put his hand on Cas’. He took a breath. “You’re shutting everyone out, Cas. They’re concerned about-”

“I don’t want them to be concerned. I don’t want them to care.” Castiel’s voice wavered.

Sam paused.

“I- I’m going to die. I don’t want them to care about me when I do.”

Sam hadn't thought that his heart could break more. He tightened his grip on Cas’s hand.

“They’re going to care even if you push them away, Cas. You can’t just stop them from caring by doing this.”

“No, but maybe I can soften the blow. Make it hurt less.” Cas gave a watery smile. “It’s my decision, it’s what I want to do. Please.”

Sam continued to hold onto his hand in the silence that followed.


End file.
